Re: Pearls Before Swine: Uncle Is Not Good With Money

On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:13:11 +0100, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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On Mon, 13 Jan 2025, Lynn McGuire wrote:
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Go watch the new Napoleon movie.  Towards the end of his career, Napoleon
takes 650,000 French and German troops to Russia, intent on taking Moscow.
When he gets to Moscow, no one is there and it is torched while they are in
it.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia
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Napoleon decides to walk home to France.  Only 35,000 of his troops make it
home with him.  Horrible.  Another 35,000 straggle in later.
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13287846/
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My point is that the Russians have been willing to go to extreme lengths to
fight off invaders.  And at this point, they consider Ukraine to be a
extended part of Russia.

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Extreme lengths? Such as being lucky, setting houses on fire and running away?
Sounds like bad strategy if you ask me.

I should point out that this was covered by Bondarchuk in the fourth
part of /War and Peace/.

Also, the Russian Strategy after Borodino was to withdraw and await
developments. In the end, what "developed" is a French withdrawal in
the middle of the Russian Winter. I'm not it is clear who started the
fires.

The "withdraw" part also worked in WW2, at least once Stalin dropped
his "hold them at the border" nonsense. In WW2, of course, they did
have to eventually stop the advance and push the Axis back. All the
way to Berlin.

Russia is a /big/ country. It takes a /lot/ of boots on the ground to
take it and hold it.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"